Since last week marked the one year anniversary of commercial Blu-ray in the U.S., I thought it was time for a trip down memory lane to look back on the history of optical discs. Blu-ray didn't just appear out of the blue (or Blu). It took nearly 50 years since the earliest trials to get where we are today.
First Optical Systems - 1958-1969
Credit for the first optical disc system is usually given to David Paul Greg, who invented a laser-based transparent disc system way back in 1958. He and others improved the technology throughout the 1960's, but it was Philips, who, in 1969, successfully created a laser-based reflective disc that really got the ball rolling. At the time, the idea of "home video" was still a foreign concept, but one that had many people excited. Only a few mostly-professional tape-based systems were then in existence, but most manufacturers felt that people didn't want to record television. They simply wanted to watch movies at home. Thus, a number of manufacturers were hard at work on various video disc ideas, which seemed easier to implement than video tape systems.
DiscoVision / VLP / LaserVision (Round 1) - 1978-1984
It took a partnership with MCA (Music Corporation of America), who they learned was working on a similar system, and nearly another decade before Philips was ready to launch the first VLP (Video Long Player), or as MCA preferred to call it DiscoVision Player. The system launched in Atlanta, GA, on December 12, 1978, with only 50 players released. All players were bought immediately -- many by employees before the store even opened -- and it looked like Philips had another hit on their hands. Following on their recent success of the audio cassette and the VCR (Philip's original name for one of the earliest videotape systems), Philips seemed to be the company to beat. Though Philips/MCA deserve the credit for the first systems, Pioneer and Sony quickly came on board to expand the market.
Despite the initial success, the relationship between Philips and MCA went south. Disc manufacturing was hugely problematic, with over 50% of the early discs being defective. In addition, the delays in coming up with a standard had given videotape time to launch and Sony's Betamax, JVC's VHS, and Philips' Video2000 systems were capable of playing and recording, and were available at a lower price. The original manufacturer's, however, were undeterred. A "relaunch" of sorts happened in 1981/1982, led by Pioneer, who relabeled their players as LaserVision players, and worked to expand the players into the karaoke market.
They were fighting an uphill battle, as rival disc formats were being introduced by competitors -- most notably RCA's CED "Select-a-vision" in the U.S., and JVC's VHD (Video High Density) in Japan -- but none used the advanced (for the time) laser technology of the Philips/MCA format.
Contrary to what many people think, these original discs were NOT digital. The audio and video data is stored in an analog format, just like all other audio and video formats of the time. This, in part, is why the discs were a massive 12" in diameter.
Compact Disc (CD) - 1982-Present
Responding to a call by the RIAA -- in probably the only decent thing they've ever done for consumers -- for a new PCM-based (pulse code modulation, ie. digital) music disc format, Sony and Philips teamed up in 1979 to create a new format to meet the demand. Knowing that other companies such as JVC were hard at work on a format as well, they proceeded quickly, using the Philips' VLP/DiscoVision system as a starting point.
Since PCM digital audio was still such a new idea, they soon found that converting the digital audio to analog video tape was the easiest way to get to get digital audio data from the studio to the CD manufacturing plant. Using this system, they found that they could get 14 or 16-bit digital audio at a 44.1 KHz sampling rate. Going with 16-bit meant less room on the tape for error correction, but, Sony believed, would produce a better quality CDs in the long run. By using binary PCM-audio data, it was possible to shrink the massive 12" video discs down to merely 5" for the audio discs, and still maintain 74 minutes of playing time. It only took two years from conception to the time when the first CD player was released in Japan in late 1982. The format became a rapid success, eventually pretty much ending the phonograph record and audio tape markets.
CD-ROM - 1985-Present
Building on the success of the audio CD standard, Sony and Philips released the Yellowbook standard for writing computer data onto CDs in 1985. Designed in an era when PC hard drives only held a few hundred megabytes of data at most, the CD-ROM promised huge storage potential of 640 MB on a small (and cheap) 5" disc. Although it took awhile to catch on, as computer applications grew in size, it became more and more common for them be available on CD-ROM, either instead of, or in addition to, versions released on many floppy disks. In 1988, the expanded the usefulness even further, creating CD-R and CD-RW discs that could be written to in addition to read from. Sony and Philips also created an interactive CD-ROM spec commonly referred to as CD-i (first released in 1991), which in many ways was a precursor to the interactive features of DVD discs. Though Philips briefly tried to market CD-i applications to home users, the primary use was in commercial applications.
Due to the increased storage capacity provided by CD-ROM, a number of video game systems came out that utilized the format. Among these were TubroGraffix 16/PC Engine CD (1988), FMTowns Marty (1991), Sega CD (1991), Amiga CDTV (1991), 3DO (1993), Amiga CD32 (1993), Atari Jaguar CD (1994), Sega Saturn (1994), Sony Playstation (1994), NEC PC-FX (1994), NeoGeo CD (1994), and the Apple/Bandai Pippin (1995). The final system to be released with a CD-based drive was the Sega DreamCast (1998), which made use of special dual-layer discs they called GD-ROM. Sony similarly tried to market a Double-density CD-ROM (DDCD) format for PCs in 2002, though only one burner was ever released.
LaserDisc (LD -- LaserVision Round 2) - 1985-2002
Given the huge success of the audio CD, and the still struggling status of the laser video players, a decision was made to try to use the "CD effect" to sell more video players. The combo player was born. First launched in 1985 by Pioneer, combo-players could play both LaserVision videodiscs and Compact Discs in the same player. New video discs were created that added CD-like digital audio. The format, using the new specifications, became known as LaserDisc, and went on to experience a lot of success in Japan, and achieve a long-term niche status in the U.S. Despite the niche status of the format in the U.S., over 17,000 LaserDisc titles were released in the U.S. during the format's lifespan.
In 1994, the LaserDisc system was improved immensely in Japan with release of high definition MUSE LaserDisc players which played MPEG-2 encoded high definition video, and the release of the first Dolby Digital AC-3 players in America. DTS discs were also released that included DTS soundtracks encoded in place of the standard PCM audio tracks. Combined with widescreen movie releases and the higher vidoe resolution of LaserDisc compared to VHS tapes, these advancements helped keep LaserDisc the preferred format for videofiles, until DVD came along.
After the release of DVDs, sales of LaserDiscs plummeted, and the final LaserDisc movies were released in the U.S. in October, 2000. Discs and players continued to be sold in Japan for awhile, with the final MUSE laserdisc player model going out of production in May, 2002. Pioneer USA continued to offer its final DVD/Laserdisc combo player for some time after that, though officially support for laserdisc is dead.
As with the CD format, the LD-format also had a ROM variant used in PC applications, though the use of the format was much more limited. Usually, the disc was only used for video, pictures, or audio, however Pioneer did release the LaserActive, a video game system, in 1993, that used LaserDiscs as the storage medium for games.
Magneto-Optical (MO) Drives -- 1990-Present
Although CD-ROM had brought optical media to the PC, the recordable variations had one major flaw: data had to be written a disc, track, or session at a time. And deleting data was really only possible by rerecording the whole disc! Canon, in around 1987, developed a drive that fixed that problem. By using a special material that reacts to both laser light and electromagnetic currents, Magneto-optical drives can have specific information "erased" by a laser, and then rewritten by an electromagnet. Though the format allowed for much more flexibility than CD recorders, the multiple passes required to erase and then "write" data made the drives very slow. The drives were first used in the NeXT computer systems released in 1990 and continue to this day, though in more limited quantities than originally hoped.
MiniDisc (MD) -- 1992-Present
In 1992, Sony released the first MiniDisc player, a format that made use of Magneto-optical technology for audio recording and playback. The format proved a very popular replacement for cassettes in Japan, but never caught on with anyone aside from musicians in the rest of the world. Part of the problem was that the ATRAC compression system employed by minidisc changed frequently in the early days of the format, and recordings from one unit often sounded poor on a unit which was designed with different hardware.
Over the years, the minidisc format was updated for use as a data medium, and later as a type of storage for PC-based audio files. Most recently, in 2004, Sony release Hi-MD players and recorders (in Asia) which could record and playback a variety of audio formats off of 1 GB discs. The Hi-MD format was designed to be used with a PC as well, and could store photos and other data on the discs for transfer between PCs.
DVD -- (1996-Present)
What started in 1991 as an attempt by Pioneer to create a new generation of LaserDisc that could store more than 2 hours of video on one side, ended with with a format that would change home movie-watching forever. By 1994, Pioneer had a fairly advanced prototype but was still a ways off from a final format, and Hollywood wanted a new format in place soon. They teamed up with Toshiba (and eventually a number of other companies) to create the dual-layered SD format. At the same time, Sony and Philips were marketing the MMCD, a new video disc system viewed as an extension of the CD format. Fortunately, Lou Gerstner, then President of IBM, called the parties together and got them to agree on a standard spec, based largely on the SD format's structure. In November, 1996, the DVD video format was officially launched, and the rest, as they say, is history.
DVD quickly replaced LaserDisc in the videophile market, and as player and movie prices dropped, eventually replaced the VHS tape as the de facto standard video format for home use. Although various reports initially stated that DVD stood either for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc, due perhaps to the confusion, the position of the DVD Forum is that DVD isn't an acronym for anything. DVD-ROM drives for PCs were available at the very beginning of the format, with lower capacity DVD-R and DVD-RAM drives available in 1997. In 2000, the DVD-R/RW/RAM specs were enhanced and full 4.7GB capacity discs were made available. The following year, the DVD+RW alliance, led by Philips and Sony released the final spec for DVD+RW, and later DVD+R discs. These competing and incompatible standards threatened to create a mini "format war," however drives that could read and write both types of media ended up becoming the standard.
Like CD-ROM before it, DVD-ROM became the defacto standard for new video game systems after it's release. Systems that use DVD-ROM drives include the Sony Playstation 2 (2000), Microsoft XBox (2001), Microsoft XBox 360 (2005), and the Nintendo Wii (2006). All those systems but the Wii also playback DVD video discs. The Nintendo GameCube also used special mini-DVDs for its games, while the Sony PSP used cartridge-based optical discs similar in structure to DVD discs.
Super Audio CD (SA-CD) and DVD-Audio (DVD-A) -- (1999-Present)
With the DVD Forum's successful launch of DVD as a video and data medium, many within the organization turned their attention toward high-resolution digital audio. The goal was to leverage the existing video capabilities of DVD, while adding very high-resolution PCM audio. Sony and Philips, the creators of the audio CD, and working at the same time on their own extension of the CD.
SA-CD was released first, at the end of 1999, with the first player, Sony's SCD-1, cost $5,000! Moreover, that first player, and many dedicated players since, have only played 2-channel SA-CD recordings. SA-CD discs are actually DVD discs, though they are not designed to play in standard DVD players. They contain no video information, but only extremely high resolution 1-bit 2.8224MHz audio in either a 2-channel or 5.1-channel configuration. The system uses a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) format that differs substantially from the standard PCM audio found on computers and other optical media. Early discs were largely SA-CD-only discs, though most recent discs are "hybrids" which contain both a stereo and/or multichannel SA-CD layer and a standard CD layer, to allow playback compatibility with standard CD players.
DVD-Audio was released shortly thereafter, with goal of expanding the DVD spec into high resolution audio. The format differs from SA-CD in that the audio is recorded in PCM format (or compressed MLP PCM) at a wide variety of bitdepths and sampling rates. To maintain compatibility with DVD video players, most DVD-Audio discs contain a Dolby Digital or DTS soundtrack and a video track or menu as well. Like SA-CDs "hybrid" format, a format called "DualDisc" allows for a CD on one side of a disc, with a DVD-Video or DVD-Audio layer on the reverse side.
Although both formats use the same disc structure, they strive toward different goals. That didn't stop people from declaring a "format war" between the formats, and sales for both have suffered perhaps due to that perception. Despite lackluster sales, many titles have been released. SA-CD, in particular, has had over 4,500 titles released. As prices for D/A converters and other components have dropped, it has become very common for DVD players to feature support for one or both high resolution audio formats. Though many people therefore have players capable of playing back the discs, disc sales have not increased as a result.
Ultra Density Optical (UDO) and Professional Disc for Data (PDD) -- (2003-present)
Starting in 2000, Sony announced their work on how to use blue-violet lasers in optical drives to greatly increase the amount of data the discs could hold.
The first of these products to reach the market was the UDO (Ultra Density Optical) format, in 2003, which stores up to 30GB on a special MO-like disc, designed to be read by a blue-laser. Though the research and development of this format led to many of the technologies that would make their way into the Blu-ray format, Sony has largely given over the marketing and development of the format to other storage companies such as Plasmon.
Later the same year, Sony introduced the Professional Disc for Data (PDD), a cartridge-enclosed disc designed to be used in high-capacity/high-reliability data applications as well as video applications. The original "Blu-ray" recorders sold in Japan in 2004-2005 were actually recording high-definition and standard-definition video onto these discs (though they were at that time referred to as BD-RE 1.0 discs). Since then, the discs have been adopted as the recording format for Sony's professional XDCAM camcorders, and have been marketed into the PC market.
Blu-ray (BD) and HD DVD -- (2006-Present)
Welcome to the present! It's been a long road to get here, and the story of just how the two most recent formats came to be, could fill a few books on its own. That said, here's the highly compressed version.
Though commercial HD DVD discs and players launched first, Sony and Panasonic have had out "Blu-ray" recorders since 2003. Initially, Blu-ray was to use a cartridge-based disc in order to prevent scratches. Those original discs are what now are called PDD discs. TDK developed a very hard coating that could protect the extremely high density Blu-ray optical media, and the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association) companies voted quickly to adopt it, allowing non-cartridge based discs to become the standard.
While the BDA companies were working on their blue laser format, Toshiba and a few allies (most notably Warner Brothers) were developing their own HD optical disc format based around the existing disc structure of DVDs. The idea was to put 720p HD video on regular DVD discs using advanced video and audio codecs to achieve better compression. This idea had a few strong selling points: for one, it would be very cheap to implement, as only new decoding hardware would be required for players, and all existing DVD production lines could produce the discs. Using the existing DVD discs, Toshiba would also be able to easily extend the value of their existing patents for that disc structure.
Seeing Blu-ray companies coming closer and closer to an all-new format that they would have no part of the parent pool for, Toshiba and others started to rethink their position. Fearing that their HD-lite format might be viewed as a stop-gap solution on the road to the higher-resolution Blu-ray format, Toshiba decided that they too needed a 1080p format if they were going to compete. Trailing far behind Blu-ray in terms of development, Toshiba and NEC worked very quickly to put together a new disc format. The final disc format, originally called AOD (Advanced Optical Disc) that increased the storage capacity of HD DVD discs to about 60% of that of the Blu-ray format. In November, 2003, Toshiba managed to get the HD DVD format selected as the high definition successor to the DVD by the DVD Forum. They did this by allowing in many new voting members to offset the BDA companies who certainly weren't voting for the proposal. Toshiba still had a huge problem as it looked as though Blu-ray was much further along in development and would be able to launch first. During negotiations between the two groups, however, Microsoft became disillusioned with a number of the BDA decisions, and decided to officially support HD DVD. Very quickly, Microsoft was able to use their software and hardware knowledge to help Toshiba create a fully-formed playback system in very short order, using their HDi development language for the menus and special features, and often their VC-1 video codec for the video stream.
By CES 2006, both formats had pretty much solidified their offerings and it was clear that a war was about to emerge. Although HD DVD had lost the exclusive support of both Warner Brothers and Paramount, with Microsoft's help they were able to include advanced features such as PIP commentary that Blu-ray would not be able to roll out in its first players.
On April 18, 2006, Toshiba released the first two HD DVD players in America (the first player was released in Japan a few weeks earlier). After several additional delays, the competing Blu-ray format was launched in the U.S. on June 20. Initial reports had Blu-ray at a disadvantage, due to a combination of lackluster MPEG-2 transfers and a firmware issues with the first Samsung Blu-ray player. For many months, HD DVD consistently led in player and disc sales. Then, on November 17, 2006, Sony released the PS3 videogame system which featured Blu-ray movie playback. The sales data changed overnight. Almost immediately, Blu-ray sales overtook HD DVD sales. Within the month following the release of the PS3, Sony, Pioneer, and Panasonic all released standalone Blu-ray players that featured much better picture quality than the Samsung player with it's original firmware. So far, in 2007, Blu-ray has enjoyed a just over 2:1 sales advantage over HD DVD, a trend that seems likely to continue to grow throughout the rest of the year.
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